The Economist says, “Internet governance: America rules OK”
The first keynote speaker at AoIR6 - Ang Peng Hwa - was an advocate of international regulation of the Internet and taking control of ICANN out of the hands of the US (see Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet - summarised here). Even the predominantly US audience at this year’s Association of Internet Researchers conference appeared sympathetic to his view (or at least not actively hostile!). The Economist (nominally British) takes different view [registration required]. The leader makes some interesting assertions quite quickly:
ICANN’s stewardship has succeeded because its focus has been not on politics, but on making the network as efficient as possible. The sometimes fierce debates that break out among techies have been conducted transparently.
I’m not an Internet governance scholar but from what I remember reading this is rather dubious.
It is also no accident that many of the countries loudest in their demands for the internet to be taken out of American hands are those, such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that are keenest on restricting its use by their own citizens.
Well, as we have recently heard private Internet companies are hardly standard-bearers of freedom on the whole.
In the accompanying article the Economist did unearth an interesting factoid which didn’t come up in the keynote speech we heard (which was largely lacking in the all-important gossip about this process):
Some countries demanded that groups representing business and public-interest causes be thrown out of the room when governments drafted documents for the summit in November. In one instance, delegates from China and Brazil actually pounded on tables to drown out a speaker from industry.
I would really like to know what that industry speaker was trying to say…
Update: I have started to run across more and more US coverage (on American Public Radio’s Future Tense, for example, or on This Week in Tech which is currently the most popular podcast. I have yet to hear anyone invited to speak when the issue comes up from the anti-US-governance side on this issue. I suspect it is because they don’t know who to ask. So is there a media-savvy person prepared to point out the real or potential problems in US dominance over the Internet’s architecture and to make the case for international governance? For that matter, is there a good document available online that makes this case?